Dominique Mérigard | Beauséjour inventaire

Coming back to the village of my origins and to my family house is like diving once again into my childhood and to walking on the steps of those who have gone. Each trip to my country is an opportunity to feel the emotions associated to buried stories, to activate the ‘I remember’. This series of photographs is an inventory of sentiments and events deeply rooted in my memory, as if I were a child, but in the empty space left behind by my late father, the last person to have occupied the house. The images are not mere compositions; they serve as triggers recalling the past. Recording the traces of this intimate universe is a means to conjure up abandon, loss and disappearance.

Transforming into images the small things that inhabit each room is to bring them back to life.

The past is thus connected to the present. But the photographs also evoke lost moments that we cannot bring back. Once the window shades and the doors of the house are shut, time stops once again and the book stops to be written. To accept to separate myself from the house without having done this work would have been like seeing my childhood distancing itself and to leave the story unfinished. In each photograph lies a parcel of memories, as in a puzzle.
(Dominique Mérigard | Beauséjour inventaire, pages 14-19)